Day 3353 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Philippians 2:12 NIV

With fear and trembling.

For as defined by our never possibly knowing just when our clock may imminently run out of time, there ought to be an urgency to our faith that wouldn’t dare imagine seeing it as something so easily capable of becoming almost a matter of indifference in us. It should something of such substance that the entirety of a lifetime’s other worries are left faded and forgotten as our minds tell our hearts that we better get to getting right before that light of this life runs out. Indeed, faith should at some point become all that matters.

Because without it we’ve not even the ability to pretend to begin to understand what hope really is nor where to possibly look for it.

And yet such ideals have become almost ideologies so cliché and subjective that they’re anymore allowed to mean something different to everyone. Hope, love, peace, purpose, profit, poverty, the preference of personal presumptions presuming our path is supposed to be paved with popularity and praise, only both aimed at us rather than our aiming our own elsewhere. For we know not how to remember that humble image in which we were made.

No, seems we’ve made far too many wrong turns to find our own way back. And yet such is the beauty of the most blessed benevolence brought about by our God’s beginning for us a new brand new that allows for us a sudden return to a better moral standing without our even having to move an inch in any direction. And yet that salvation did indeed die to find us right where we were, right where we perhaps still are, such is not at all as we so incessantly assume as this right to some retirement from all responsibility or reason.

Instead, that He did indeed lay down His life for us to take up ours renewed, such should help us see the sheer gravity of His grace as shining still from that grave so empty as to welcome us with more than enough room for us too to lose this life we’ve well lost already in the worst of all wrong directions. Yes, I believe that Christ both entered that tomb so as to atone for our lives lived as if that end weren’t our own but so too in order to prove that the death we long denied is but merely the beginning of the life we should have always lived.

The life we’ve instead never known, and most heartbreakingly, the life we stand still at risk of selfishly never knowing for fear of the effort such a gift deserves in return.

And we face such a nonsensical misunderstanding as presently we are still standing entwined within in a place that’s all but engorged with the kind of insanity that has left so many saying what they apparently truly assume, and that is that faith is the finish line as opposed to the first step. So many so surrounding us that their voices seem as if to ache for our agreement to such assumption as such agreement is to them an affirmation of sorts that they’re not nearly as wrong we I think we all know deep down we’ve all been.

For one cannot truly believe that Christ did all He did just to leave us so stale and stagnant as to continue inside the existence that demanded such a decision as to die for we who are in ways at times still very much His enemies. Because indeed, of the little that we do that we do seem willing to do, seems that much of it, if not most of it, is indeed still in many ways as wrong and wicked as our way has always been. And yet despite our constant decision upon dissention, it seems that perhaps our lack of appreciation is what must gall worst of all.

Because again, He bore our cross to die our death and yet He looks down upon us and sees almost daily this sort of continued indifference that’s chosen clearly for only the coddling and comfort of our not having to do anything. Because we don’t want to do anything. That’s what we talked about yesterday. We’re a people plenty content to race right up to the edge of His purpose and the grave which He proved the place of the provision of His promise only to stop there and just sort of permeate.

Indeed, much of what we’ve come to do in life, with life, of life is nothing more than our settling for saturating our present presumptions within this place we’ve come to rest as if such is truly the best achievement for a life. Just a bunch of brief belief that allows us to go only so far as we’re willing to go into His gift of a new life. Yes, we seem to see, all of us individually, these degrees of salvation as if such exists in different levels with different outcomes promised for the different urgencies and varied intensities shown by one’s decision as to how dire this gift seems to be.

It’s almost as if we’ve built our idea of Heaven upon terraces, the highest and most hopeful of which are reserved for the slimmest of few who go so very far past the point of surrender to self that they become the ones who deserve the best allotment of His promise. And too that those who do not care to try quite as hard so as to stay somewhat safe in this world which still does not welcome our beliefs, they can still find some hope, perhaps just a more measured amount comparatively.

Yes, we are a people who are most adamant to have some sort of say in just about everything, salvation no different.

And yet we can’t apparently see the line scratched into the sand as if to say that we are either with Him or we’re against Him. In fact, I do believe He actually said as much Himself. Matthew 12:30 if you’d like to fact-check for yourself, which I highly encourage everyone to do. For indeed within those pages you just might find more such clarities as both that dire distinction in Matthew as well as this one here written to the church in Philippi.

That we are indeed called to do something as if He might actually deserve to see that we do indeed care that He did indeed die for us to have again that chance to care, something our pasts prove we were highly uninterested in doing.

And that’s exactly why the heaviness of such things as repentance are spoken of so constantly and consistently throughout the entirety of that book He breathed for our benefit. He knows well that we’re a people who prefer to do as little as humanly possible, still expecting the full measure of the promise of course. And yet that is not at all how our God works for He, again found clearly in His Word, works in ways that are high above our own. All that He does is in every way bigger and better than all we’ve done, all we’ve become.

Such is why He now calls us to strap on, lace up, stand up and do something.

But that’s entirely the issue that is most certainly a growing problem evidenced most clearly in our still at times wavering between such willingness and instead staying warm inside where we already are without the work and weariness of wanting for more than we know we can be. Indeed, everything is as an excuse to those who refuse to lose their selfish ideals as defined in our way of life never risking losing anything that we might like, want, need or know.

No, we would rather risk never finding, never knowing, never growing into ever being anything better than we’ve been than to have to get our hands dirty and work out our own salvation as if we should actually have some role in the altering of our lives.

Why do we hate this idea so much? That His promise is both the finish line waiting upon the end of these lives but too the beginning of doing something more with the time we’ve left of these lives than what we did with them, to them before we heard of His hope. Why can’t we understand that? Why won’t we understand that, if not for a simple lack of urgency?

Because if we truly understood the difference in destinations, and had even the slightest measure of humility so as to help us see that we do indeed deserve the very worst of the pair, we wouldn’t be just standing here waiting for Him to come back and pick us up as if we’re somehow afraid that if we moved He might miss us. Is that what it is? That we’re scared that if we start moving, start changing, start trying to stop fighting against Him that He might return and not know who we are, where we are? Are we afraid that He can’t find us again if we happen to have found the courage to charge closer to His calling?

Such does indeed sound the sort of stupidity that we’re well capable of assuming, consuming, confirming if need be in order to be or become yet another excuse for us to never once move from this wasted and worthless way of life we’ve lived and want only to stay within. But friends, that stupidity has to die before it kills us. Because yes, He did come to this earth to lay down His life to save us from our sins. But if the fact that He could die and raise Himself back to life doesn’t inspire in us a fear of the fullness of His impossible ability, well then we’re in bigger trouble than we thought.

Because if we aren’t so terrified of His power, of His presence, of His promise not waiting for us that we become unwilling to remain wavering in this wasteland, then we clearly cannot know anything of who He is nor what He did.

For His Gospel should grind our old assumptions to a halt as our minds and hearts and eyes and ears begin for once seeking and seeing and sewing and striving and crawling and begging and breaking away from this world in the sort of pace that does not care to count the cost as these lives should be considered already lost so that we might have nothing remaining between us and Him. Indeed, we should allow nothing to remain between us, most of all our tired excuses built upon selfish assumptions that want only for us to have to do nothing.

No, we should be not only willing to work out our salvation until the day He returns to complete what we cannot begin to be, to build, to become, we should be ecstatic at the opportunity to show Him just how important our salvation truly is. And we can only show Him that it is indeed to us a matter of life or death if we do as He asked and take up these crosses and scorn all our losses as we leave behind everything in order to build a relationship with the only One who means everything.

With fear and trembling.

Not indifference. Not passivity. Not laxity or laziness. Not caution or concern. Not a passing interest or a wavering willingness. With fear and trembling as we should know that He will judge all that we do, even if, especially if we decide to do nothing any differently, nothing more than we’ve done before. For if we do nothing, change nothing, lose nothing, sacrifice nothing, well then what are we saying this gift is worth to us? What can His death be worth to us if we don’t find in it our own personal willingness to do something better now that we’ve been given the chance to do something new?

Friends, I know that there’s an ongoing debate regarding faith and works, but in all honesty, it’s something of just another distraction. Because what does it matter? No, we’re not called to work for our salvation as if His gift is somehow or in some way reliant upon our ability to believe big enough or do good enough to please Him as if to repay Him. No, it’s not about that at all for if it were, it wouldn’t be a gift. But the fact that it is a gift deserves a response.

And if our response looks no different, sounds no different, does no different than we’ve done before, then how on earth can we say with any assurance that we do trust in that gift having been given?

Because a gift so gracious as the Son of God dying for us should be so vastly appreciated that He sees us working out that salvation as if it does depend on us. Not that it does, but that it is indeed so important, so valuable, so meaningful that we’re willing to do, to change, to lose whatever we have to in order to make sure that we don’t miss it.

This faith should be given whatever we can give it, not because it’s on us to earn it, but rather that we’re not willing to risk it. And if we walk this life seeking the fullest measure of this faith we can fathom, and do so with fear and trembling, then at some point it will indeed become of such meaning to us that everything else just doesn’t matter anymore.

And considering this is truly the epitome of a life-and-death dilemma, we just can’t afford to hold anything back.

Because Christ sure didn’t.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold